For Adorno, dialectical thinking requires self-consciousness be inscribed in the sentence structure itself

Evidence

We have said that for Adorno—as indeed for Hegel, as for all dialectical thinkers to the degree that they are genuinely dialectical—thinking dialectically means nothing more or less than the writing of dialectical sentences. It is a kind of stylistic obedience analogous to that which governs the work of art itself, where it is the shape of the sentences themselves, above and beyond all conscious reflection, that determines the choice of the raw material. So here also the quality of the idea is judged by the type of sentence through which it comes to expression. For insofar as dialectical thinking is thought about thought, thought to the second power, concrete thought about an object, which at the same time remains aware of its own intellectual operations in the very act of thinking, such self-consciousness must be inscribed in the very sentence itself. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 115

Categorization

• XREF: The reader’s goal explicitly is the Frankfurt-School method; this is the method’s core thesis — that style, not content, is where dialectics lives. Connects to Adorno’s correspondence with Benjamin and Lukács’s totality. — connects to: Adorno’s dense style is a deliberate intransigence against cheap readability — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 18; Dialectical thinking is thought to the second power inscribed in the sentence itself — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 115; Dialectical style requires self-awareness inscribed in the sentence (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘thinking dialectically’ means for Adorno: not a procedure but a sentence-level stylistic enactment.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that idea-quality is judged by sentence-type, and that self-consciousness must inhabit syntax itself, is a dense, paradigm-shifting position about the unity of method and style — genuinely top-tier for this book.

Broader Connections

• The form-content distinction is the central operative mechanism of dialectical thinking #expands (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 670
• Thinking must hold dialectic and its opposite together at once #qualifies (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 170
• Footnote form drives Adorno’s dialectical method by constraining speculation #expands (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 125